What is Secular Humanism?

By Carman Bradley

According to the 2001 Census, 21.9 percent of
Canadians have no religious affiliation.
Many of these people may not see themselves as “declared” secularists,
but most have nonetheless chosen to integrate their lives around the mood of
their specific age rather than around God.
Secularists live as if material order is supreme, as if God does not
exist. Secularism advocates human
betterment without reference to religion or theology. While secularism may not indicate theoretical atheism, it
certainly does represent practical atheism.
Secularism is deeply in debt to the rise of the “scientific paradigm” -
the notion that the world of things is the whole of existence. Carl Sagan and Peter Singer illustrate key
aspects of the secular scientific paradigm.
In Demon Haunted World: Science as
a Candle in the Dark, Carl Saganwrites: “To discover that the Universe is some 8
to 15 billion years and not 6 to 12 thousand years old improves our
appreciation of its sweep and grandeur; to entertain the notion that we are a
particularly complex arrangement of atoms, and not some breath of divinity, at
the very least enhances our respect for atoms; to discover, as now seems
probable, that our planet is one of billions of other worlds in the Milky Way
Galaxy and that our galaxy is one of billions more, majestically expands the
arena of what is possible; to find that our ancestors were also the ancestors
of apes ties us to the rest of life and makes possible important - if
occasionally rueful - reflections on human nature.”[i]

Peter Singer, in
Practical Ethics, writes under the
topic “Has Life a Meaning”: “When we
reject belief in a God we must give up the idea that life on this planet has
some pre-ordained meaning. Life as a
whole has no meaning. Life began, as
best available theories tell us, in a chance combination of gases; it then
evolved through random mutations and natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen
for any overall purpose. Now that it
has resulted in the existence of beings who prefer some states of affairs to
others, however, it may be possible for particular lives to be meaningful. In this sense atheists can find meaning in
life.” [ii]He gives his views on practical ethics
in a Godless universe: “If the fetus does
not have the same claim on life as a person, it appears that the newborn baby
does not either, and the life of a newborn baby is of less value than the life
of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee…In thinking about this matter we should put
aside feelings based on small, helpless and – sometimes – cute appearance of
human infants…If we can put aside these emotionally moving but strictly
irrelevant aspects of the killing of a baby we can see that the grounds for not
killing persons do not apply to newborn infants.”[iii] Applicable to secularism, Dostoevsky warns: “If God is dead, then everything is
justifiable.”

Secularism places the emphasis on temporal social
enjoyment rather than on eternal spiritual values. Secularists live their entire lives without acknowledging
God. In a strikingly equivalent
religious paradigm Gnostics acknowledge the existence of an unknown god and act as if relationship
with this deity is impossible. Although
only 0.004 percent of Canadians are declared Gnostics, Howard Bloom writes that
Gnosticism is the most common thread of religious thought today. He calls it the “American Religion” and concludes: “even our secularists, indeed even our professed atheists, are more
Gnostic than humanist in their ultimate presuppositions.”[iv]In his book Darwin’s God, Cornelius G. Hunter writes on Gnosticism: “The deity is absolutely transmundane, its
nature alien to that of the universe which it neither created nor governsand to which it is the complete
antithesis…The world is the work of lowly powers.”[v]Hunter observes that the Gnostic’s
belief in “lowly powers” was
fulfilled in Darwin’s evolution by natural selection - the theory that life was
not divinely created but developed by random chance and selective survival of
the fittest. The acceptance of
evolution, in turn reinforced Gnosticism in modern thought. Hunter writes: “Two important themes are discernible in the writings of Darwin and his
fellow naturalists: Gnosticism and natural theology.”[vi] And natural theology is theology based on reason and ordinary (temporal) experience. It is distinguished from revealed
theology which is based on Scripture and religious experience. Philosopher Michael Ruse observes that Victorians in
Darwin’s time had trouble with the idea that God created a natural world that
often seemed devoid of His presence.
Ruse writes: “Darwin is
characterized as one held to some kind of ‘deistic’ belief in a God who works
at a distance through unbroken law: having set the world in motion, God now
sits back and does nothing.”[vii] While it may not be fair to say all
secularists are Darwinists, the reverse may very well prove to be true.

Although declared humanists make up only 0.007
percent of Canadians the impact of humanism on state governance is huge. Humanism is a life-stance not dissimilar to
secularism, dedicated to the betterment of society through the use of reason
and ethics from a non-religious viewpoint.
Humanists do not believe in any deity and consider the notions of an afterlife
and rewards and punishments after death by a supernatural god as
meaningless. Two influential Canadian
humanists who knew each other in that capacity are Pierre Elliott Trudeau and
Henry Morgentaler. Prior to
joining the Liberal Party, Mr. Trudeau was a member of the Board of the Montreal
Humanist Chapter.[viii] Henry Morgentaler replaced Mr. Trudeau in
the Montral Humanist Chapter and became an advocate for abortion on demand and
first president and founder of the Humanist Association of Canada. Two influential American humanists are Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique and principle
founder of the feminist movement in the 1960s and the Episcopalian Rev. Dr.
John Shelby Spong, author of the 2001 release A New Christianity For a New World. Both were recipients of Humanist of the Year awards.

Under the title “Resolution to Combat Religious
Influence,” the HAC proclaims: “The
Humanist Association of Canada is a national association that includes
humanists, atheists, agnostics, rationalists, freethinkers, and
non-church-affiliated people.[ix]We
believe that Canada could be a model for many countries on how to develop a
free and democratic society composed of many different ethnic, religious, and
philosophical groups living in harmony.
We believe strongly in the separation of church and state and the
neutrality of the state in matters of religion …Many current practices are
undemocratic and unfair… We believe in a secular school system for all… Another
example is the recitation of prayers at official functions. These are unacceptable…Although
unsuccessful, many of our members signed a petition to have the reference to
God removed from the preamble of the Canadian Constitution. This petition was read out in Parliament by
MP Svend Robinson on June 8, 1999.”[x] [Same-sex marriage legislation accomplishes
in symbolism and practicality what these humanists and MP Robinson could not
achieve by a direct and informed democratic process. The humanists wanted “God” removed from the statement “Canada is founded upon principles that
recognize the supremacy of God,” and replaced by “intellectual
knowledge.” In ruling the way they did
on marriage redefinition, the Supreme Court has finally completed the
progressive amputation of the worth of this theist Preamble statement.]

Tenets of the secular humanist worldview which now
pervades our governance include: (1) universe created by a mysterious
accidental explosion of energy; (2) Earth accidentally created by a fortuitous
union of gases; (3) life on earth inadvertently created by the 1/1050 chance
match (union) of DNA and RNA molecules in a primordial soup; (4) humankind
created through a continuous evolutionary chain of random species mutations
influencing either survival or extinction reaching back billions of years to
the LUCA – last universal common ancestor; (5) there is no supernatural design
behind the beauty, pleasure and mathematics of existence; (6) life has no
extrinsic (higher) purpose or meaning; (7) fundamental law of nature is
survival of the fittest; there are no absolute rights and wrongs. Moral ethics are a derivative of societal
evolution; and (8) Eschatology (end times): there is no hereafter, humankind is
just a chance sophisticated arrangement of atoms and molecules awaiting some
accidental asteroid collision with Earth, which will simply rearrange these
atoms in a less sophisticated pattern and re-start the Darwinian process.

The bane of secular humanism is religion. To the secular humanist ideologue the
faithfully religious must be publicly silenced and politically neutered, if not
de-programmed - in their view Christians are like the Borg, a threat until
disconnected from Jesus Christ.
Dostoevsky’s dictum is the key to achieving secular humanist
utopia. Secular humanist support for
same-sex marriage and homosexual liberation in general, draws tremendous
momentum from the undermining and constraining impact homosexism has upon world
religions. Moreover, same-sex marriage will also
undermine resistance to human genetic engineering, use of artificial wombs and
human cloning - all of which are humanist dreams. The International Academy of
Humanists proclaims: “The potential
benefits of cloning may be so immense that it would be a tragedy if ancient
theological scruples should lead to a Luddite rejection of cloning.”[xi]Mona Greenbaum, of the Lesbian Mothers Association of Quebec, claims that
lesbians should have the same access to fertility technology that married
heterosexual women have. And Brigitte
Boisselier, director of CLONAID, claims there is already demand for cloning
among gay couples. Bentley Glass, then
president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, declares,“No
parents in the future time will have a right to burden society with a malformed
or a mentally incompetent child…Just as every child must have the right to full
educational opportunity and a sound nutrition, so every child has the
inalienable right to sound heritage.”[xii] In this anything goes secular
humanist worldview, Glass predicts parents will abort genetically imperfect
fetuses or use gene therapy to alter their unborn children. Inert (homosexual) couples may harness the
power of technology to overcome biological procreative design
shortcomings.

The heterosexual system of marriage and
family is the chief obstacle to this secular humanist technocratic future. If traditional marriage endures, the realm
of the state and the development and use of the technology can be limited. George Gilder further warns, “if the
family should widely breakdown, then the world of artificial wombs, clones, and
child-development centers would become an important reality rather than a
laboratory curiosity.”[xiii] And if “orthodox” religion endures marriage
and family will prosper and survive.